Celebrating ARC Discovery Project grant successes

Dr Joe Blythe was awarded $453,790 for his
project “Australian Aboriginal conversational style”, with Associate Professor Ilana Mushin, Professor Lesley Stirling and
Associate Professor Roderick Gardner. Joe’s project
aims to re-examine claims that Aboriginal Australians conduct conversations in
different ways to Anglo-Australians. It will investigate and compare ordinary
conversations in these groups on a large scale. The project expects to provide
new evidence to explicate Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal conversational norms,
pinpointing differences which may lead to intercultural miscommunication.
Expected outcomes include endangered language documentation, and evidence-based
findings to disseminate to service providers, to communities and to Aboriginal
organisations to improve ways of engaging with each other. In addition, the
project will benefit Aboriginal communities with new approaches to language
revitalisation.

Professor David McAlpineand his team (Dr Nicholas Badcock, Dr Paul Sowman, Dr Maria Chait, Associate
Professor Juanita Todd, Dr Jessica Monaghan, Dr Jaime Undurraga, Dr Nicol
Harper)were awarded funding
for their project “Listen and learn -
statistical learning and the adapting auditory brain” ($453,869). This project aims to explore the link between rapid neural
adaptation - a form of learning referred to as statistical learning - and human
listening performance in noisy environments. The project aims to generate a new
understanding of mechanisms that contribute to listeners' abilities to
understand speech in noise, and to complex communication disorders such as
dyslexia. Expected outcomes will include increased capacity to investigate a
broad range of cognitive and communication functions. Benefits will include
potential technologies and algorithms to assist listening (in devices such as
hearing aids), language development and reading.

Professor Ingrid Piller’s
project “Communicating with people who have limited English proficiency”
received funding to the amount of $400,183. This sociolinguistic project aims
to investigate how fluent English speakers interact with people who have
limited proficiency. In contemporary Australia such mundane interactions may
determine employment, education or health outcomes. While research into
language barriers has mostly focused on the experiences of migrants from
non-English-speaking backgrounds, this project will investigate how English
speakers deal with increasing linguistic diversity. Expected outcomes include
an understanding of the role of majority members in facilitating the
integration of newcomers. This will provide significant socioeconomic benefits
for institutions and individuals as they navigate everyday intercultural
communication.

Associate
Professor Mridula Sharma is a team member on a project led by Associate Professor Sheila Degotardi from theDepartment of Educational Studies on “Language for learning: Developing
learning-oriented talk in long-day-care”.